Lenore Skomal: Grow your heart 3 sizes

Feeling a bit Grinchy these days? Don't beat yourself up over it. We all have holidays lacking the ho ho ho.

I've had several, thanks to death and divorce -- two of the primary joy killers, in general, and around this time of year, in specific.

There isn't enough spiked eggnog in the Western Hemisphere to stem the tide of sadness of going through that first holiday season without a loved one. (Even if the love is missing from that phrase.)

Something about holiday routines coupled with long-held tradition pinches the nostalgia nerve and plinks at the heart.

Change can be a heartless mistress, especially at this time of year.

My mother had a favorite saying: "Charity begins at home." The simple message has its own profundity that eluded me when she was alive.

To be blunt, I didn't understand what she was talking about. And we'd even argue about it, because it smacked to me of selfishness. After all, she was a devoted Catholic -- remember the woman wanted to be a nun -- and this saying seemed incongruous. Shouldn't she be out feeding the poor or something, chalking up honor points for heaven?

Of course, I was really young back then, and many of my opinions fell easily into black and white categories. I felt obligated to sit in the lofty seat of all knowingness, the arbiter of justice and morality.

Looking back on the way she lived her life, short as it was, gives insight and clarity into her personal credo. Charity has to start in one's own heart. And it's hard to be truly charitable toward anyone else when you're not feeling that way toward yourself, as well.

During that first Christmas without her, when I just wanted to crawl under the covers and stay there until spring, it dawned on me that I needed to be charitable to myself by refusing to expect more than I was able to give. And admitting that grief also has its place at the holiday table. Then it was so much easier -- I'll venture to say even natural -- to give that same gift to my siblings and my father. And the circle expanded like the concentric rings around a stone dropped in a pond.

Charity begins at home. And when and if you let it, you might just find that your heart, like the Grinch's, will grow three sizes. And then the true meaning of Christmas will come through, and you'll find the strength of 10 Grinches ... plus two.

LENORE SKOMAL writes every Thursday. If you enjoy this column, you can order her book with a collection of them at www.lenoreskomal.net. You can read her blog at www.goerie.com/blogs/gutcheck.